Actor Kal Penn, famous for his role as Kumar in the Harold and Kumar comedy movies, dished out a few lame puns and gave a lackluster speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) speech Tuesday night. His remarks essentially boiled down to: at least President Barack Obama tried to do something for young people, even if those terrible Republicans blocked his every move.
Penn, who also appeared on the hit medical drama House and who has served as the President’s liaison to young people since 2008, insisted that Obama was fighting hard for the future of young people.
“We’d worked our hearts out and cared deeply about what this would mean for other young people,” he said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the room—tears of joy for the history that was made, but also tears of sadness because some American dreams would still be deferred.”
While he mentioned pell grants and college tax credits, he steered clear of talking about how tuition has risen drastically under the Obama administration. He also failed to mention how the increased funding for work studies, grants and financial aid have only resulted in increases in the ever-growing costs of education.
His speech mostly hit Obama’s “cool factors” like repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and issuing the order to capture Osama Bin Laden.
“I’ve worked on a lot of fun movies, but my favorite job was having a boss who gave the order to take out bin Laden—and who’s cool with all of us getting gay-married,” he said. “Thank you, invisible man in the chair, for that, and for giving my friends access to affordable health insurance and doubling funding for the Pell grant.”
But while the speech was full of nice phrases and key punch lines, it was contentless and fell flat on anything related to economic growth, job creation and prosperity for young Americans.
